1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to secure database data retrieval, and more specifically, to a method and system for efficiently retrieving data from a secured database by pre-processing provided access information. The present invention relates specifically to a method and system for retrieving new mailing address information from a privatized mailing address database in response to permutations of name and old address inputs that are non-standardized.
2. Background of the Invention
Mailing address information privacy is protected by statutes such as 39 U.S.C. §412, that prevents the United States Postal Service (USPS) and others from providing a list of addresses and 5 U.S.C. §552(a) that prevents the revelation of private information for other than intended purposes. Consequently, the USPS must oversee authorized agents who are selected to possess sensitive data such as mailing address database information. Specifically, lists of mailing addresses must not be provided by the USPS or any agent, and when retrieving change-of-address information for a single party, name and address information for any other party must not be revealed.
The above-incorporated parent application “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR STORING AND RETRIEVING DATA USING HASH-ACCESSED MULTIPLE DATA STORES” provides a secured data store that may contain address information and be distributed to vendors that are not agents supervised by the USPS. However, in order to use the method and system described in the above-referenced patent application, access information must be standardized and filtered (pre-processed) so that the information placed in the data store may be retrieved. While the above-referenced patent application describes a level of pre-processing that obtains an 11-digit delivery point code (DPC) that is used to access the data stores and retrieve associated address information, the DPC must be obtainable from user input or other data entry, such as records in other data stores, before the address information can be accessed.
However, stored data, user input and access information provide by other sources that correspond to the name of a business or an individual may not be uniform and may contain errors. For example, a user verifying the address for ABC, Inc. known as ABC Computers, where valid identifiers may be Albuquerque Computers, Inc., ABC Computers, ABQ Computers, ABC, Inc. and a number of other permutations that should provide access to the requested new mailing address information, when a valid old address is supplied in conjunction. Further, when verifying the address of an individual, valid variations in proper names may also yield many permutations that should provide access to the requested mailing address information.
In order to process permutations of access information, however, a typical software application would need to contain the required access information in order to match the permutations and to determine to which type of entity (business or individual) a particular input corresponds. Such embedding of the information in the above-described data store system would compromise the security provided by the system.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for retrieving information from a secured data store that securely pre-processes provided access information and provides efficient retrieval of address information in response to permutations of access information input.